Emerald Viewer 1.5.0.2573 Released – Review

A new release of the beta Emerald Viewer is out. I’ll be dusting off my Alt and trying it later today. It appears to be based on the Snowglobe 1.5 code base. They note that MOAP (Media On A Prim) does NOT work in this version.

The current official forum link is here: ! Emerald Beta 2573 Links The new official web site still shows Emerald Viewer  1.23.5.1636-1 as the main Emerald Viewer.

There appears to be no blog yet. I suspect the team is pretty busy right now. Their Third Party Viewer (TPV) listing has not been restored yet. That may take some time. Linden Lab is not blocking the viewer and you are allowed to use it.

New Forum

You can use your ID and password from Modular Systems’ forum to login at EmeraldViewer.net’s forum. It is probably a very good idea to change your password. When doing that realize that while the page says 6 or more characters are required, it is actually 8 or more.

Uninstall Emerald

I’m at the point I want to get all the old Emerald stuff out of my computer. So, I have uninstalled all versions of Emerald, even back to the Greenlife era. With all the Alphas and Betas I had several uninstalls to do.

The uninstall programs left files and folders behind. Emkdu.dll was one of the files left behind. So, I manually deleted the folders in C:\Program Files\ GreenLife Emerald Viewer and C:\Program Files\Emerald Viewer

The old settings and cache locations were left behind too. So, I deleted;

C:\Users\[user-name]\AppData\Local\Emerald\…

There is a separate cache for sound files at: C:\Users\[user-name]\AppData\Local\Emerald Sound

That seems to be all the files. Now what about the Registry. If you do not know about editing the registry, stay out of it. Use a registry cleaning program like JV16 to clean out any remaining unused registry keys before you start reinstalling Emerald. Whatever you may decide to do now is a good time to make a System Restore Point.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\Emerald.exe was left behind.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\MuiCache with key C:\Program Files\GreenLife Emerald Viewer\Emerald Viewer Alpha\Emerald.exe
C:\Program Files\GreenLife Emerald Viewer\Emerald Viewer Alpha\unins000.exe

C:\Program Files\GreenLife Emerald Viewer\unins000.exe

C:\Program Files\GreenLife Emerald ViewerOpt\unins000.exe

There are a number keys in the area of: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DirectInput\EMERALD.EXE4ADAF85F01403000

Even more here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\LowRegistry\Audio\PolicyConfig\PropertyStore\11254a6a_0

There are of course a load of MRU entries but those are not a problem. But, as you can see lots is left behind. I used JV16 to clean things up rather than manually attempt cleanup.

Install Emerald Viewer

Install sets the cache to the Second Life default cache. I strongly suggest you change the cache location. So, once installed and before logging in, click Edit -> Preferneces -> [Network] and then click SET on the Disk Cache Location entery. Browse to the path shown in the dialog.

C:\Users\[user-name]\AppData\Local\SecondLife — move up one level and create an Emerald folder. Your final path should be C:\Users\\[user-name]\AppData\Local\Emerald

While you are at it create a separate folder in the same location for sound files. May be;
C:\Users\\[user-name]\AppData\Local\EmeraldSound

Since you are going to be reloading the cache, plan to visit an empty Linden SIM and reload your inventory first thing. If for whatever reason an inventory load starts, do not teleport while it is downloading. Wait for inventory download to complete.

I don’t really see anything new. On my Dual Core2 w/8800 GTS I get about 35 FPS. HTTP Texture Get seems to work…

Disclaimer

Remember this viewer us currently not on the approved Third Party Viewer List. You are responsible for what you do with this viewer in SL. It is allowed for use on the SL grid.

There are several articles about recent problems with this viewer. One has to make a personal call whether they trust the new development team and the mix of people that made this version.

This version does have the EMKDU.DLL file (last date modified 8/20/2010 – Size: 544,768 bytes – previous problem version was 534,016 bytes).

Emergence Viewer

There are still lots of upset people and people that still haven’t figured out what the scandal is about. Whatever…

Past, Present, Future is a blog post by LordGregGreg expanding on his view of the Emerald Viewer and those still involved in producing the Emerald Viewer. For those that do not know, he is providing the Emergence Viewer, another compile of the Emerald Viewer but one where he has complete control of ALL the source code. Some may find it an acceptable substitute for Emerald. According to him the Emergence Viewer is a one shot thing and will not be upgraded in the future.

One thought on “Emerald Viewer 1.5.0.2573 Released – Review

  1. It became apparent that there is also a temp folder that has been used by at least some versions of Emerald, and left undeleted.

    Might be accidental, and location depends on your version of Windows. Might be removed by a Windows-level cleanout of temp files. In my case, it contained the emkdu.dll file, one of the controversial bits, and somehow it got installed from there by Windows.

    I’m not confident of the competence or integrity of the Developers–it may just be that they’ve been over-optimistic about what they needed to do. I can’t see why Windows would do that with emkdu.dll, without some specific linkage. Was some dangerous crud left in the code?

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